Race Theory

1
Race Theory

• Not a single unified theoretical school
• Post-1965 movement in literary theory
• Influence of Marxism, Structuralist, and
  post-Structuralist thought
• Concern with representing/representation of Race
  in literature and culture
• Interest in theorizing language and linguistics
• Political and literary movement

2
Houston A. Baker, Jr. (b. 1943)

• Central African-American critic
• Interested in vernacular
• Tensionmainstreaming African-American
  tradition/highlighting distinctions
• Claims White standards not suitable for Black
  writers

3
Houston A. Baker, Jr. (b. 1943)

• Uses high theory to study Black writers
• Claims language speaks the subject
• White achieved via determinate negation
• African-American culture as complex matrix
• Wants to preserve difference within Black culture
• Great significance of vernacular

4
Houston A. Baker, Jr. (b. 1943)

• Dialects of the unheard
• Theorizes the Blues as powerful popular Black
  art
• Black community still shackled by economics of
  slavery
• Experience still must be translated into art
• Baker still believes in humanist notion of
  individual

5
From Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American
Literature A Vernacular Theory (1984)

• 2227 Language speaking the subject
• 2228 Material conditions of slavery and blues
• 2229 Intertextual ideologieswants to maintain
  materiality
• 2230 African-American culture as complex matrix
• Figured by Blues

6
From Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American
Literature (1984)

• 2231 Blues
• Potential of Blues to erupt creating play of
  meaning
• Get anonymous voice from Black communal
• 2232 Blues as synthesis always becoming
• Still material
• 2233 Blues as meditational site where
  antinomies are resolved
• Blues always at the crossing

7
From Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American
Literature (1984)

• 2234 Blues singers codify and organize
  diversity of experiences
• 2235 Blues always wandering
• Blues avoid simple dualities

8
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (b. 1950)

• Important African-American critic and spokesman
• Emphasizes an African-American tradition
• Uses and revises mainstream literary theory
• Mixes deconstruction and African-American
  tradition

9
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (b. 1950)

• Theorizes signifying/signification
• Helps produce Blackness textually
• Gates wants to uphold integral Black aesthetic
• Advocates cultural tolerance

10
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (b. 1950)

• Upholds black aesthetic
• Wants to preserve Black aesthetic in literary
  institution
• Positions himself between separatist and
  assimilationist politics
• Edited Norton Anthology of African-American
  Literature

11
Barbara Smith (b. 1946)

• Black lesbian feminist pioneer
• Critic of White feminism
• Flowering of Black women writers in 1970s
• Critic of White feminism solidarity
• Sets tasks of Black feminist critic
• Identifies lesbian tendencies in text

12
Toward a Black Feminist Criticism (1977)

• 2302 Literary establishment ignores Black
  lesbian writers
• Invisibility makes a starting point difficult
• 2303 Study of feminism has ignored Black and
  3rd-world women
• For books to be meaningful, they have to be
  talked about
• Task of academic feminism

13
Toward a Black Feminist Criticism (1977)

• 2304 No political movement seeking Black womens
  experience
• Academic feminism has not recognized sexual or
  class politics in Black womens literature
• 2305 Critiques Elaine Showalter and Patricia
  Meyer Spacks
• 2306 Selective ignorance of feminist critics
• No fear of publicly attacking or ignoring Black
  women

14
Toward a Black Feminist Criticism (1977)

• 2307 Approach of Black feminist critic
• 2308 Black womens writing as integral tradition
• Look first for precedents in Black womens
  tradition
• Literary criticism linked to political movements
• Lesbian reading of Sula

15
Toward a Black Feminist Criticism (1977)

• 2313 Black lesbian critics must still imagine a
  literature
• Heterosexual privilege as only privilege Black
  women can enjoy
• 2314 Lack of privilege allows so few Black women
  to make leap
• 2315 Wants Black women to not be alone

16
Toni Morrison

• Great American novelist
• Important African-American critical voice
• Reviews institutionalization of American literary
  history
• Argues we have tokenized race in race
  literature
• Calls for re-reading of classical American
  literature
• Need to investigate race in White literature